This invention relates generally to software maintenance and development tools and, more particularly, to an extensible, language independent software development tool having a graphical user interface, i.e., a GUI Integrated Development Environment.
The evolution of data manipulation and data management systems, such as SAS®, SPSS® and SQL®, and relational database management systems, such as IBM® DB2 UDB® and the Oracle® RDBMS, has resulted in several high-level software languages that are inconsistent and, in some cases, unstructured. Based on these inconsistencies and the unstructured nature of some of these languages, database management languages may be difficult to use, edit and debug. Moreover, because of the lack of a standardized syntax among these programming languages, it has been difficult for users of these languages to share code. This is particularly the case with SAS®.
Since the advent of personal computers and the GUI Interfaces such as Windows® Interfaces, it has become increasingly necessary for businesses to develop or purchase customized software in order to support specific business strategies or processes. This, in turn, has led to the implementation of a variety of software development tools and Integrated Development Environments (“IDEs”). Generally, these software development tools assist users and programmers in editing, debugging and developing software for specific programming languages. Software providers of data manipulation languages or systems have, however, failed to provide a single comprehensive software development tool capable of assisting users in the editing, visualizing, debugging and development of software. Furthermore, the creation of graphical development tools for particular programming languages, such as, SAS®, has been inhibited by the intricacies of the programming language itself.
Over the years, point solutions have been introduced to address specific issues. For example, there are a few GUI based ftp software packages to make the job of transferring and managing code easier. There are also a few GUI based editor software packages to make editing code easier. Still further, there are software packages that one can use to manually diagram program flow and data flow. What is lacking, however, is a software package that integrates these best of breed point solutions and integrates them in such a way that they work seamlessly with each other, e.g., to have an editor that is integrated with a ftp package so that the editor can edit files that are located in a remote server or to have the editor integrated with the diagramming package so the user does not have to manually generate and update program flow or data flow diagrams.
Thus, a need exists for an Integrated Development Environment for generating and maintaining software code, in particular, for data manipulation centric languages. More specifically, a need exists for a system and method for exchanging, editing, debugging, visualizing and developing SAS®, SPSS®, SQL®, DB2 UDB®, Oracle® RDBMS and other relational database management system software.